Say what you will about the control Irving-owned Brunswick News has over New Brunswick's daily papers, at least the crusty journalists at the Telegraph Journal work reasonably hard at crafting the daily news. Their record is far from perfect, but on any given day an NB reader can at least get more out of the TJ than its provincial cousins, the Daily Gleaner, or the Times-Transcript.
The once scrappy urban weekly, here, however, has clearly lost whatever journalistic principals it might have once had, in the pioneering years before it was consumed by Brunswick News. It's latest low, almost laughable to anyone who watches local media?
The October 18 cover story, proudly circulated throughout Fredericton, Moncton and Saint John, asks New Brunswickers to why not? consider natural gas.
Hardly the pull-no-punches reviews of urban life that here was once known for, but as a cover story it appears relatively benign (after all, natural gas is somewhat cleaner than the majority of energy sources NB Power forces New Brunswickers to consume on cold winter mornings).
The only problem? When you turn inside to actually read the cover story, it turns out that it is little more than a breathless press release/advertorial, prepared and paid for by Enbridge NB, the province's largest supplier of natural gas.
No wonder copies of here are now orphaned regularly, left in brightly-coloured newspaper boxes throughout the province. Saint Johners once had a small newspaper worthy of conversation. Now all they get is an 'urban' product about as newsworthy as a Walmart flyer.
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